1Re: George Wallace--5 replies

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Terence Finnegan

Sep 22, 1998

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Hello to alabamahistory subscribers...all 4! of us so far..I thought to get
things started I'd forward these thoughts on G. Wallace from the H-SOUTH list
...I'm beginning to promote the alabamahistory list in various places, but
feel free to send information about the list to anyone you think might be
interested...

Also, jump in and introduce yourselves if you're so inclined...maybe give
a little info on what aspects of Alabama history interest you most...my
personal interest runs to medical history at the moment, although other aspects
are fascinating as well....

A.J. Wright, MLS//moderator, alabamahistory
Dept of Anesthesiology Library
School of Medicine
University of Alabama at Birmingham

George Wallace was nothing more than a reflection of ourselves. He was a
racial
bigot, a narrow minded, self-serving chauvinist, just like us. He only stood
in that
doorway because we elected him to stand in that doorway, for us. We have
changed
over the years and so did he. We matured over the years and so did he. He
didn't
change alone, we all change together. George Wallace was just one of our
hood
ornaments.

Stephen Doiron
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As I understand Wallace's early years, he wanted to get elected because
there
were some things he wanted to accomplish and he lost his first governor's
race
when his opponent beat him with the race issue. After that he decided he
would
never let anyone do that to him again. Later in his life, and I do not just
mean
because he got shot, he looked at what he had done and scared himself.
Therefore, Wallace is the most outstanding of the players in the Southern
Tragedy: Segregation and Race become the only issues.

Dean Rowley
Historian
Martin Luther King, Jr.
National Historic Site
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I hope that everyone on the list saw John Lewis's piece in the New York
Times and also Howell Raines's surprisingly good obituary, which really
caught the right note toward the end. Most of the rest of the press
commentary ran from lame to ludicrous.

First, whether George Wallace changed and redeemed himself in some spiritual
way is a useful and interesting question only for George Wallace and the
Almighty. Even if it is true in some sense, nothing he did afterwards went
very far to undo the damage that he did to this country. His legacy is
two-fold. First, he was the most malevolent and effective of the white
supremacist demagogues of his day. This was, of course, for political
purposes, but there is nothing to suggest that he did not believe it down to
his bones. For example, as we recall his public spewing of hate we must
also recall his private intercession to protect those who blew up the
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church from prosecution; his close association with
his favorite speechwriter, Asa Carter, head of the most violent chapter of
the KKK in the South, whose minions castrated a black man pulled off the
street at random to show Klan power; his vicious and unscrupulous personal
life whose details make our current President seem quite dignified and
gentle by comparison.

Far more damaging is his second act, in which Wallace cleaned up his racial
rhetoric, stopped saying the n-word in public, stopped mentioning race
directly, for the most part, and taught the right wing in this country that
the rust belt suburbs and the "white ethnic" enclaves of the North and
Midwest were as ripe for coded racial appeals as the white South, and showed
the Republican Party exactly how to exploit that fact and to destroy the
Democrats in the South after the African American freedom movement forced
the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to support interracial democracy.
This is how the party of big business, the party of the country club,
became the white working man's party, though there were other (much less
important) factors at work and though the Democrats certainly aided in their
own destruction in a variety of ways. But this rendition of the race card
was unstoppable under the circumstances, and it has swung the entire
political spectrum "so far to the right that you won't even recognize it,"
as Attorney General John Mitchell predicted of the beloved "Southern
strategy" that owed so much to George Wallace and which remains his most
important political legacy.

Let me close by adding that I am confident that if George Wallace ascended
toward the pearly gates last week, that the Almighty was standing in the
doorway, holding hands with four little girls.
Tim Tyson
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Re the legacy of George Wallace...

1. His place in US history is fairly simple. The snarling bantam
rooster of Southern resistance - the boxer who relished the adulation
of his (white) constituents in the 1960's and early 70's. The
politician who proved that Northern whites could be as racist as
(or more than?) Southern whites.

2. His place in Alabama history is more complicated, and his
image there is appropriately more confused. By Southern standards
he was more liberal than most political contemporaries (leaving
race aside?).

3. His later conversion and redemption (who can do more than
speculate here) are important indicators of change, as is the
fact that his position on states rights is now more in line with
the views of many beyond the South as well is within it. An
interesting contrast here is provided by Strom Thurmond, who,
although he shifted with the political winds after the Voting Rights
Act, has never confronted (publicly at least) his earlier white
supremacist views.

4. Most of all, his face as he confronted the integrationists will
remain the most powerful symbol of the cornered animal in the
Southern white psyche of the 60's.

Jim Farmer
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Another question I have about Wallace, and I realize we have skated
around this question on the list in the past, relates to his role as a
'populist." many people use this term for him, and I am wondering about
the applicability of the term. I would be willing to say that he was a
populist, small "p", by the time of the 1968 election. However, I would
also throw in the caveat that we as historians need to differentiate
between historical Populism, the late 19th century agrarian insurgency,
and small "p" populism, which relates to a personal style of governing
based on an appeal to the masses, usually using class and often race,
ethnicity or some other wedge issue. I hope this is a helpful and not a
confusing addition to an important question.